Featured Interview With Kim Carter Mystery Novelist
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised outside Atlanta, Georgia, and lived on the outskirts of town in Newnan for many years. When my husband passed a few years ago, I decided to move to Biloxi, Mississippi closer to many of my supportive friends. I have raised four beautiful grown children and enjoy time with my grandbabies. I enjoy walks on the beach with my dog Wally.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
There isn’t a time that I can remember that I didn’t love books.
My mother read to me incessantly as a child and I still have all the ‘well-worn’ childhood books to this day. I read them to my children as well as their favorites.
I didn’t start writing until 1999 when an illness left me homebound for a few years. So, I began to write different plots and stories, before I knew it my first mystery, not knowing I was good at it, and started writing my first book.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite genre is mystery/suspense which is also what I write.
I have so many favorites but to name a few….Sue Grafton, Iris Johansen, Karin Slaughter, and Mary Higgins Clark. My husband Jules was my #1 person who inspired me. Today my best friend, Lisa Mobley Putnam, Kelly Keylon my publisher, and of course my dear friend and expert marketer, Cat Lyon are my greatest supporters and inspiration. My sister, Pam, is my biggest fan and encourager!
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My newest novel, “The Root of All Evil” book three is part of the “A Clara and Iris Mystery Series” of novels and was released in February 2024. Book two is titled “Murder Among the Tombstones” and book one introduces the characters of Clara and Iris in “Sweet Dreams, Baby Belle.”
A little backstory of how Clara and Iris came to be while how other characters begin and my investment of the real “baby belle”…
‘Sweet Dreams Baby Belle’, was inspired by a child’s tombstone in a Biloxi Cemetery. It was broken and only had the name Baby Belle on it. There wasn’t a date of birth or death. My friend and I were so moved by it that we researched her for over two years and were eventually able to repair her broken monument while maintaining the integrity of the original base made by her family in the late 1800s.
Although the novel is completely fictional, ‘Baby Belle’ was the pure inspiration behind it. The book begins with Lizzie, who is a waitress in Atlanta but marries a cardiac surgeon who sweeps her off her feet and gives her a life of luxury.
However, Lizzie soon learns all that glitters is not gold when she discovers her husband’s drug development company is a Ponzi scheme. She realizes her life could be in danger if she doesn’t somehow escape the gated mansion on the hill. Her only hope is to go to Biloxi, Mississippi, and seek refuge with her sister, Maggie.
Maggie and her husband Leland quickly find a safe harbor for Lizzie in a house on the bayou. However, the house at the end of the street might not be the quiet retreat Lizzie was hoping for.
The confines of her hideaway soon get to Lizzie so she begins sneaking out in the middle of the night to walk in the historical cemetery next door. One night a damaged, carved lamb on top of the tombstone of a small child catches her eye, and the story of the baby/child captures her heart. But when Lizzie Chatsworth thinks her world can’t get any more complicated, she finds herself in the middle of a mystery from the 1800s pulling her in and demanding she seek justice.
As her husband’s empire begins to crumble, he’s more determined than ever to find Lizzie and kill her. But, will the mystery of Baby Belle’s death end Lizzie’s life first?
Books two and three share these two old retired private investigators opening their own PI business together and take readers off on both a gripping and some humorous mystery situations…
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Kim Carter Mystery Novelist’s Website